Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

[363a]
urge the
necessity of being just, not by praising justice itself, but the good repute
with mankind that accrues from it, the object that they hold before us being
that by seeming to be just the man may get from the reputation office and
alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now enumerated as coming
to the unjust man from his good name. But those people draw out still
further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with the
gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods
give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare,
[363b]
the one that the gods make the oaks bear for
the just: “‘Acorns on topmost
branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks,’ and he tells
how the ‘Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and
weighted with soft wool,’”Hes. WD
232ff. and of many other blessings akin to these; and similarly the
other poet:“
Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the
high gods,
Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her
foison,
”
[363c]

“
Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted
with fair fruits,
Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with
fishes.
”

Hom. Od. 19.109

And Musaeus and his son1
have2 a more excellent song3
than these of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they
conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of
the saints,4 where, reclined on couches
crowned with wreaths,
[363d]
they entertain the
time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an
everlasting drunk. And others extend still further the rewards of virtue
from the gods. For they say that the children's children5 of the pious and oath-keeping man
and his race thereafter never fail. Such and such-like are their praises of
justice. But the impious and the unjust they bury in mud6 in the house of Hades and compel them
to fetch water in a sieve,7 and, while they still live,
[363e]
they bring them into evil repute,
and all the sufferings that Glaucon enumerated as befalling just men who are
thought to be unjust, these they recite about the unjust, but they have
nothing else to say.8 Such is the praise and the censure of the just and of the
unjust.

“Consider further,
Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injustice

2 For the thought of the following
cf. Emerson,
Compensation: “He (the preacher) assumed
that judgement is not executed in this world; that the wicked are
successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and
scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No
offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this
doctrine.”

An XML version of this text is available for download,
with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted
changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.